[A]C'est le mien.
Käte noticed it with a certain angry surprise. How indifferent the woman was. Was she not holding the child as though it were a useless burden? She was filled with envy, torturing envy, and at the same time with hot anger. That woman certainly did not deserve the child. She would have liked to have torn it out of her arms. How rough she looked, what coarse features she had, what a hard expression. She might really frighten anybody terribly with her black looks. But now--now her expression brightened; ah, she had seen the piece of money Paul had taken out of his purse.
Ugh, what a greedy expression she had now.
The fruit-picker stretched out her hand--there was a large shining silver coin--and when it was given to her, when she held it in her hand she drew a deep breath; her brown fingers closed round it tightly.
"Merci." A smile passed quickly across the sullen face in which the corners of the mouth drooped morosely, her blunted expression grew animated for a moment or two. And then she prepared to trudge away, the shapeless bundle containing the child on one arm, the heavy pail on the other.
They now saw for the first time how poor her skirt was; it had patches of all colours and sizes. Dried heather and fir-needles stuck to her matted and untidy plaits, as they hung out from the gaudily spotted cotton handkerchief; she had an old pair of men's hobnailed shoes on her feet. They did not know whether she was old or young; her stout body and hanging breasts disfigured her, but that her face had not been ugly once upon a time could still be seen. The little one resembled her.
"You've got a pretty child," said Paul. To please his wife he started a conversation again with this woman who was so inaccessible. "How old is the boy?"
The fruit-picker shook her head and looked past the questioner apathetically. There was no getting anything out of the woman, how terribly stupid she was. The man wanted to let her go, but Käte pressed up against him and whispered: "Ask her where she lives. Where she lives--do you hear?"
"Heigh, where do you live, my good woman?"
She shook her head once more without saying a word.